


get out of my hair

by starkly



Series: you don't have to do this alone [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Rule 63, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 21:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13396470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkly/pseuds/starkly
Summary: “Shit, Tones,” Rhodey whispers as fifteen years of growth falls to the floor. “Tell me you didn’t just chop off all your hair because you’re pissed at your dad.”“I chopped off my hair because I’m pissed at my dad,” Tony answers, unrepentant. She stares at her reflection, the messy ends of her hair hanging unevenly around her ears. She looks like an idiot, but she feels good. Lighter than she has in ages.





	get out of my hair

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for NaNoWriMo 2017 and posted at [dailyironfamily](http://dailyironfamily.tumblr.com/post/167435062770/day-12-rule-63) on tumblr. This fic was proofread before being posted here but is otherwise unchanged.
> 
> Day twelve: rule 63 AU. This was just supposed to be a few snippets based around the prompt of ‘hair’ so I could take a break after writing such long fics the last few days but this still ended up over 1k words. (Technically this is partially a rule 63 AU and partially a trans character AU because everything's better with all ladies.)

“I hate him,” Tony announces as she bursts into the room, slamming the door behind her. “I can’t believe someone as busy as him still finds time just to annoy the shit out of me.”

Rhodey looks up from where she’s lounging on her bed with a textbook. Tony’s pretty sure she’d been sleeping instead of studying, but now is not the time to tease her for it. She stomps over to her desk, pulling open a drawer and sifting through all the junk.

“Tones? What’s wrong?” Rhodey asks, setting her book down and getting off the bed. Tony ignores her, having found what she’s looking for.

“Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s great,” she says, taking the pair of scissors with her into the adjacent bathroom. Rhodey hurries after her.

“Everything doesn’t look great,” Rhodey says warily.

Tony stops in the middle of the room, looking at herself in the mirror. Her young, short, scrawny self, too much makeup on her face, totally out of place in a school like MIT. She silently thanks whoever may be listening for having found at least one friend in Jacqueline Rhodes, then takes all of her long hair into one hand, lifts the scissors, and cuts.

“Shit, Tones,” Rhodey whispers as fifteen years of growth falls to the floor. “Tell me you didn’t just chop off all your hair because you’re pissed at your dad.”

“I chopped off my hair because I’m pissed at my dad,” Tony answers, unrepentant. She stares at her reflection, the messy ends of her hair hanging unevenly around her ears. She looks like an idiot, but she feels good. Lighter than she has in ages.

Rhodey laughs, coming over and gently taking the scissors from Tony’s hand. “Here, let me clean you up. How short do you want it?”

They’re silent as Rhodey evens out her hair, turning it into something a little more respectable. When she’s done, she sets the scissors down on the edge of the sink and asks,

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Tony shakes her head. “Maybe later.”

Rhodey, bless her, just gives Tony a hug and then points at her hair on the floor. “You’re the one cleaning that up.”

* * *

Jacqueline Rhodes always wanted to be a pilot. She’d gotten this far and she wasn’t going to stop now. Even if Tony kept trying to get her to stick around.

“Look, if those idiots don’t know what they’ve got, you can always come work with me,” Tony says, throwing a grape up in the air and then catching it in her mouth. Her hair’s still short five years later. Jackie thinks it looks good on her. “I don’t care what Howard says.”

“I’m not going to quit the Air Force,” she replies, shifting slightly on the comically large pool inflatable she’s lying on. Tony’s floating not far away on a similar inflatable, a big bowl of grapes balanced on her stomach. “I’ve been hearing they might actually let women fly combat missions soon.”

Tony snorts, clearly unimpressed. Jackie agrees, but she’s not going to give Tony more fuel for her argument to get her to jump ship.

“I’m thinking of moving out here,” Tony says, popping another grape in her mouth. “That way dad won’t be able to nag me 24/7.”

“Won’t you miss your mom?” California is nice, but Jackie can’t imagine being an entire country away from her mother. Even though she knows if she’s ever deployed she’ll have to deal with being even farther away, that feels different.

“I’ll visit sometimes. There’s always the phone.” Tony falls silent, then tugs at the ends of her hair. “I need a haircut.”

“Again? It’s already pretty short.”

“Says the girl who always has a crew cut. You should grow it out.”

Jackie shakes her head. “It’d be ‘unprofessional’.”

“For the army? There’s women with longer hair.”

“White women,” Jackie retorts, and Tony frowns, silent again. Probably trying to find a counter-example and failing. “Anyway, I like keeping it short. Easy maintenance.”

“Fine then, I’ll cut my hair like yours. We can match.”

“Oh, no,” Jackie laughs, “you’ll look like some sad orphan out of a Dickens novel.”

Tony throws grapes at her until Jackie paddles close enough to flip over her pool floatie and dump her into the water, bowl of grapes and all.

* * *

Tony’s parents die the next year. Jackie finally get deployed as a pilot to the Middle East. Tony moves the company to Malibu. The world keeps turning.

* * *

“I’ve got pepper spray and I’m not afraid to use it!” the tall, lanky redhead at the door says, facing down a guy with twice his muscle mass, and Tony laughs and calls out,

“No need for that, come show me what’s so important you’re threatening my security for.”

And that’s how Tony meets Virgil Potts, thereupon renamed Pepper, and Pepper saves the company nearly two million dollars in accounting mistakes and is promoted to Tony’s personal assistant.

Tony likes Pepper. He’s smart, efficient, no-nonsense to a degree that helps Tony focus when she needs to. He’s cute too―she particularly likes his freckles and the really ugly way he blushes. He’s an amazing assistant, so Tony only hits on him a couple times as expected and then leaves him be. Assistants don’t last long with her and she’d like to keep this one as long as possible.

And Pepper, to her surprise, stays. Even when he has to fish her out of a tangle of limbs after a wild party the previous night, or she gets so drunk she can barely make it through a board meeting without embarrassing herself. Pepper stays. Pepper is solid and dependable and unchanging. Predictable.

And then.

She squints at him one morning, drinking a truly foul concoction to try and get rid of a hangover before a press conference. “Are you growing out your hair?”

Pepper stops sorting papers, frozen in place. He seems…scared, and Tony frowns, confused.

“I am,” he answers after a moment, clearing his throat and going back to work. Tony just shrugs and drinks more of her terrible smoothie.

She doesn’t think anything of it again until one day she realizes his hair’s long enough to pull into a ponytail, and she tugs at it playfully, sitting down on the couch beside him.

“Like the ‘tail. You look kind of like a pirate.”

Pepper gives her a look. “That’s all you need to be a pirate, a ponytail?”

“You could get a big gold earring too. And a parrot.”

“I’ll consider it, Ms. Stark.”

* * *

Tony’s tinkering in the workshop when Pepper walks in. That’s nothing unusual, but the sound is. She pulls off her goggles and turns around, looking for the source of the clacking, but she finds only Pepper standing there in a charcoal gray suit with a clipboard in hand, long hair not in its usual tight bun, and when she looks down―

“I need you to change some things in my files,” Pepper tells her. There’s a moment of silence that seems to last forever, and then Tony says,

“Are those my heels?”

“Yes,” Pepper replies, and holds out the clipboard. “They’re small changes, name and gender, but I figure the CEO who built half the systems we use can do it no problem.”

“Oh,” Tony says, looking down at the papers on the board, then back up at Pepper. Then she does a double take, looking back down. “Oh, you’re making Pepper your official middle name? That’s…”

If Pepper didn’t know any better, she’d say Tony was blushing. Tony never did know how to handle sentimentality very well.

“I like it,” Pepper admits. “I don’t mind if you keep using it. It’s a lot better than Virgil.” She wrinkles her nose slightly as she says it. The name ‘Virgil’ had always chafed, for multiple reasons.

“Virginia Potts,” Tony reads off the paper, sounding it out. “I like it. Very regal. Still kind of nerdy. It fits you.”

“You think?” Pepper says, smiling a little. Tony smiles back, holding out her hand, and Pepper takes it.

“Welcome aboard, Virginia.”


End file.
